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Acknowledgments

There
are many people to thank for the production of this book and the
information that’s enabled me to write it.

I
owe my gratitude primarily to Bernie Silver, my editor and friend; to
my niece Gabrielle for the illustrations; and to Alicia Robertson, my
wonderfully supportive and helpful publisher.

Also,
thanks so much to those of you who took the time to read drafts of
this book and contribute your ideas. A special thanks to David Cowan,
E.J. Dieterle, Dr. Arlene Simmonds and Todd Snyder, Ph.D.

As
for the information I’ve acquired, I learned much from many guest
lecturers when I taught an MBA course on International Business.

And
while I counseled at ProMatch, numerous people shared their views of
the companies and cultures in which they’d worked.

The
many books I’ve read about different cultures, companies and
countries contributed to my desire to write on this subject in the
first place.

And
the three courses I created on company and country culture for
Illumeo form the basis of this book.

Finally,
my own travels have taught me much about how to observe, understand
and respect the values and behaviors of those who are different from
me.

So
why write a book about company and country culture? Answer: because
culture dictates how we behave and think; thus understanding culture,
both within and outside the company, is critical to an organization’s
success.

The
culture within helps determine who a company will attract, to what
degree those people will thrive, and therefore whether the company
will succeed.

The
critical nature of understanding cultures outside the company becomes
clear when we consider that Globalization is the norm today.

Not
only are we trading with people from other countries, we’re working
with people who come to us from all over the world, and we’re
living beside people who have been raised quite differently from us.
For our sake and the company’s, we don’t want the biases we’ve
probably developed living in our own “neighborhood” to affect how
we treat people from other cultures.

Trading
with others was the start of getting to know people who were
different from each other. Perhaps it started with people rowing
bravely to another island to meet and trade with its inhabitants.
Today trade is the norm. It is international and frequent.

Think
about the car you drive. Where did the parts get manufactured? Where
did they get assembled? What about the clothing you are wearing as
you read this, or the computer you use? As you can see, so much of
what we take for granted today comes about because of the interaction
of people from all over the world.

Since
trade takes place worldwide, it is sometimes used as a weapon in what
are commonly referred to as “trade wars.” Instead of using guns
and grenades, governments often impose tariffs, or duties, on imports
and exports. This is done either in retaliation against tariffs
imposed by another country or to apply pressure on a nation to
conform to international law or opinion. Or a government might levy a
tariff to gain a trade advantage or bring in more income.

Some
governments create rules that make it difficult for someone from
another country to do business – to – business. The government
must be involved.

In
the past, most of our interactions were with people just like us.
They grew up in the same village or town, went to the same schools
and the same churches. Understanding each other was so much easier
because of the similarities in the way we were taught to think and
behave. But people from far away were raised somewhat differently
from us, and because of those differences we often misunderstand and
misevaluate each other. The dissimilarities lead to confusion.

Learning
about other cultures helps alleviate the misapprehension and
bewilderment.

Take
how people nod or shake their heads when talking with you. In the
USA, we typically nod to mean “yes” or “we’re still paying
attention.” In India, people shake their heads to acknowledge
they’re paying attention and we often interpret that, mistakenly,
to mean they’re saying “no.”

Not
only do we sometimes have difficulty working with people from other
lands, but also with people from our own country because of age,
gender and regional differences, as well as upbringing, all of which
can make it difficult to communicate with each other.

It’s
these differences that confuse what we’ve been taught as the
“right” way to behave. That’s part of what we mean when we talk
about culture.

This
book is about culture. People differences, regional differences,
country differences and differences in companies based here in
Silicon Valley – which is where I live.

So,
let’s try to define our terms!

Culture
is an interesting word. We use it and its derivatives in several
different ways, each of them only one element of what we call
“culture.”

Let
me give you a funny example of an expansion and tortured use of the
word:

When
she was in her teens, one of my sister’s friends remarked one day:
“Trudy, how come you are so acculturated?” Of course, what her
friend meant to ask was how was it that my sister, growing up in the
Bronx (like me), was well-mannered and socially comfortable.

We
also think someone is cultured if they like music and the arts.
People often assume that if someone is rich, that makes them
cultured.

So
on the one hand, we are using the term “culture” to apply to a
level above the ordinary. On the other hand, we are describing a way
of being, a way of life among a relatively large and identifiable
group of people, and how it shapes the behaviors and beliefs of
individuals in that group.

Our
culture teaches us how to behave, how to think, what to believe and
what is right and wrong. If the only thing we know is what we’ve
been taught, then whatever our unique culture teaches is the “right
way” and anything different from it is the “wrong way” by
definition.

In
this book I’d like to leave my readers with the belief that their
way is just different, not right or wrong. Our way is only one of
many ways.

“The
belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the
most dangerous of all delusions.”

—Paul
Warzlawick

Let
me give you another example. In England, right-handed people hold
their fork in their left hand and their knife in their right. They
cut with their right hand and eat with their left. They don’t keep
switching back and forth, as we do here in the USA. Here, we hold our
fork in our left hand and our knife in our right to cut, but then we
switch so our fork is in our right hand for eating. Neither way is
wrong. In fact, each is correct within its own culture.

So
then, what is the culture of a community, a clan, a country and even
a company? In addition to being a way of life among a group of
people, it is something that shapes a group’s behavior and it’s a
system of shared values, customs, beliefs, attitudes, norms and
ideas. It is a patterned way of thinking, feeling and reacting.

Culture
serves the basic need for a predictable world in which a person can
make sense of his or her surroundings. Those sharing a common culture
can be expected to behave predictably and—according to the
specifics of that culture—correctly.

Here’s
another example. In New York City where I grew up, the workplace was
highly competitive, and we knew if we didn’t consistently perform
at our best we could easily be replaced. If we needed to take a
break, we did so after completing an assignment or after finishing a
business-related phone conversation. When I started working in Los
Angeles, I was horrified to discover that when the bell rang at 10
a.m. and again at 3 p.m., my coworkers would tell the person on the
phone they’d call them back in ten minutes because they had to go
on their break, which apparently was more important than the
customer. I later learned this rigidity stemmed from California laws
governing break times being more stringent than my experiences in New
York.

Culture
defines the rules. The rules define culture. Thus, culture protects
us from too much uncertainty by informing us how to behave and what
to expect from others. We absorb our culture’s customs and
traditions through learning and observation, and then practice until
we habituate them and don’t even realize how we’ve picked them
up.

The
earlier in life we learn something, the more unconscious it becomes
and the harder it is to see that what we’ve learned is an option,
not an absolute. We pass this learning on to the next generation,
which passes it on to the next, which passes it on to the next, and
on and on it goes.

As
we said previously, a culture is a group of people that defines and
lives by specific cultural norms. That group could live in a
particular location (such as a village, town or neighborhood), belong
to a particular religion (such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or
Islam) or have certain innate traits (such as age, race or gender).

It’s
also true that we work in organizations, each of which is a community
with its own defined culture. Think about the question you’re bound
to ask an employee of a company for which you’re considering
working: “What’s it like to work here?” That is really asking,
“What’s the culture of this company like?”

A
company’s culture is its values, code of behavior, ideology and
norms. It is “the way we do things around here.”

So,
in this book we are exploring many different customs and cultures
throughout the world, and the differences in organizational cultures.

Why
do that?

Why
bother to investigate and write about these different cultures? The
answer is simple but important.

We
are living and working with people from all over the world. Our next
door neighbor might have immigrated from India, China, Indiana or
Chicago. The woman working in the next cubicle might come from a very
strict and religious background in which it is totally inappropriate
to tell “dirty” jokes, and we need to be more conscious of our
casual behavior. She may have been raised in the Philippines and
taught behavior that someone from the Bronx might consider
excessively polite.

And,
of course our corporate headquarters might be in Germany, Spain or
Thailand.

Whether
we are the ones traveling to other countries, or our bosses,
coworkers, clients and friends have traveled to where we currently
reside and work, we need to learn to understand them and to accept
the differences in the way people behave and what they expect.

In
order to write about these different cultures we need to make
generalizations about groups of people. It is important to remember
that we are merely talking in generalizations. We ‘e not saying
that all people of a particular culture are the same.

Here
is the important distinction, one that will be repeated elsewhere in
this book.

A
generalization refers to a statistical norm. We are saying that,
generally speaking, most people of this group look, act or behave in
a certain way.

Let
me give you an example. We say the height of American women is
between five-foot-four and five-foot-nine. But I have a friend who is
under five feet tall. And former Attorney General Janet Reno was
about six feet tall. Both of these people fall in the outer extremes
of the statistics. They’re women; they just aren’t covered by the
generalization.

Generalizations
are useful. Clothing manufacturers, for example, base their patterns
on normative data. Insurance companies do the same.

A
stereotype is an assumption that all people in a particular group
look and behave the same way. To be prejudiced is to act on that
assumption.

So,
I repeat: we will be making generalizations because that’s really
the only way to talk about the uniqueness and differences in other
groups of people.

Knowledge
is powerful. It enables us to communicate better, to negotiate more
effectively and to deal successfully with those who are “different”
from us.

Let
me give you a few examples of how lack of knowledge created bad
feelings and problems.

An
American woman of Chinese ancestry was working in one of the big
high-tech companies here in Silicon Valley. Because she spoke
Chinese, her company sent her to China to work with her Chinese
counterparts to change processes in their manufacturing plant. I met
with her just before she left for this assignment and again shortly
after she returned.

In
the beginning she was excited. Not only did she feel honored to have
been selected for this assignment, she was thrilled at the prospect
of visiting China. When she returned, though, she was angry and
frustrated. Upon seeing me she barked, “You cannot trust those
Chinese. They make promises they don’t keep and they lie to your
face.”

What
happened? Lack of knowledge!

First,
she clearly didn’t understand the culture and mistook nods for
agreement, when people were merely politely acknowledging they were
listening.

The
woman’s next error was trying to build a consensus at meetings with
people who were strangers to her, and knew her only as an emissary
from their parent company. They would have considered it horribly
rude to disagree with her in public because she was their superior,
or at least represented people who were.

And
finally, because she lacked knowledge, she didn’t know you must
work with a company’s internal leadership to get anything
accomplished. And this internal leadership is not necessarily
higher-ranking officers but higher-ranking people in the family or
clan.

In
other words, she failed to understand the culture.

Let
me offer you another example of how important it is to have knowledge
of a culture before making decisions that prove awkward and
insulting.

A
program manager responsible for many engineers and other high-tech
folk was frustrated because one member of his creative team, an Asian
engineer, never spoke up at meetings. This manager believed an
effective brainstorming session was one in which all team members
spoke up equally, or at least almost equally. So he and his buddies
came up with what they considered a brilliant solution to the
problem. They would penalize those who did not speak out at these
meetings by creating a kitty, into which anyone who did not
contribute to the discussion had to throw a dollar.

I have to digress for a minute. When I use the word “kitty,” I am
referring to the money usually thrown onto the center of the table
during a poker game. I feel compelled to write this because once when
I was giving a speech on this topic to an audience, many of whom were
not American-born, some actually thought I was referring to a baby
cat.

Illustration
1, The “Kitty”

Back
to my main example. Forcing people to pay a fine certainly didn’t
work to encourage this Asian engineer to speak up during meetings.
What the manager didn’t realize was that this normally creative
employee considered him the superior at these meetings, and so he
couldn’t openly disagree with him.

My
Kung Fu sensei (instructor) once told me that in Japan a student
couldn’t even ask for clarification, or for something to be
repeated, because it would question the instructor’s authority
while implying he didn’t do a good enough job.

So,
what should this group’s manager have done? Clearly he needed to
conduct one-on-ones with those who didn’t speak up at meetings,
and/or allow them to submit ideas on paper, perhaps even anonymously.

Different
standards of polite behavior are important examples of how cultural
differences really affect how we get work done.

A
Korean CEO with whom I worked told me it was impossible for him to
conduct a creative brainstorming session in Korea because his staff
would think it rude to offer him, the company’s chief executive,
their “humble” suggestions. He would deliberately bring Americans
with him on his trips, hoping they would serve as role models and
thereby stimulate the discussions he so desperately wanted to have
with his staff. But this strategy proved ineffective.

I
offer you these examples as “coming attractions,” or samples, of
what this book is all about, as well as to remake the point that it
is really useful to acquire the knowledge needed to interact
effectively with people from other cultures.

The
language of culture is different, depending on whether we’re
talking about the culture of a company – a business organization –
or that of a country or region. So I’ve divided this book into
sections. The first two cover company culture and country culture,
and the language used to describe both, while the third discusses the
cultures of more than 30 countries and the ramifications of doing
business with them.

Company Culture

Every
village, town, city, country, neighborhood and organization has a
culture, as does every company. Culture exists whether formalized or
not, whether we can define it or not. In organizations, we have the
opportunity to create the kind of culture we want. If we don’t
consciously create our organizational culture and work hard to
preserve it, we’ll get one by default.

So,
in this section we’ll concentrate on organizational culture—what
it is, and how to shape it rather than let it mold the company

What it is in
short (with a little repetition)

Just what is culture? Simply
put, it’s a way of life among a relatively large and identifiable
group of people—it’s something which shapes that group’s
behavior. More specifically, it’s a system of shared values,
customs, beliefs, attitudes, norms and ideas. It’s a patterned way
of thinking, feeling and reacting.

Culture
is predictable. It serves the basic need for a predictable world in
which a person can make sense of his or her surroundings. Those
sharing a common culture can be expected to behave predictably; also,
correctly within that culture.

Culture
protects us from too much uncertainty by informing us how to behave
and what to expect from others. We absorb our culture’s customs and
traditions through learning and observation, and then by practicing
and habituating them. Sometimes we learn and practice subconsciously,
but we almost always pass the lessons on to the next generation.